During the months of searching for Robilar’s Forge, change has been afoot in the Refuge. New arrivals to the Lantern Copse and Deepwatch have tripled, with no sign of reduction. Farmers, miners, and soldiers more than anything. It is clear that the power that founded the Refuge is preparing its people for war!

Scouts on the border report several alarming developments. Smoke rises from the goblin infested mountains to the north. The Scarecrows of the southern plains abruptly withdraw, flocking south in great numbers. Gnolls in the forests set camp closer and closer to the Refuge itself. Orcs of the Pomarj Empire seek answers for their fallen comrades. And off to the distant east, in the swamps of the Mistmarch, scaly legions stir and muster.

While the Refuge Council decides how to meet each threat, it is up to the Refuge’s heroes to lead the defense, conquer new resources, and push beyond the enchanted boundaries of their home. To victory!

Banging pots and pans while sliding down the road

We started the adventure by heading back to the marbles place to talk with the ghost

We pissed him off by asking too many questions and giving him a lowball price for a 500 gold piece of sailing armor that allows you to float without effort without sacrificing durability. We got lots of info from him about the surrounding area and history of the place.

The Mill is just a mill, there is a giant lake and mountain to the north and lots of troops roaming the area come from a centralized location.

We left and I turned into a bird to scout out the area ahead since there seemed to be a castle. I scouted out the castle while the team hung back, its where all the skeleton army is located. They have ballistas and catapults and a full courtyard with 10 horses. All the roaming skeletons seem to come from this castle. It has a shallow river running around it that acts as sort of a makeshift moat with a drawbridge on the front.

After avoiding the castle and cutting through farmland we came across the Druid markings I found on our first expedition enscribed on the magical bridge. They pointed to this location. Unfortunately the OG druid stones have been moved and turned into a home for some sort of giant creature. We sent our woodland elf in to sneak around and see whats up, out front there was 2 giant goats and inside was a giant cyclops. We nope’d out of here and headed back towards marbles place.

While the rest of the party took a long rest, i turned into an owl and searched the area ahead to where we were going next. Found a messed up place with a bunch of holes in it and further ahead was a scorched battlefield. I headed back and took my short rest with the rest of the group.

After resting we went to the hole area. Chrispy got caught by a massive bug scorpion pinsir thing and almost died. Thankfully brobarian and gronk smashed it in 1 turn dealing 45+ damage.

After this we went looking for more trouble and came across a fight between some skeltals and scarecrows, after waiting for a bit for the skeltals to die, we came in and swooped up some ezxp on the scarecrows.

We went north at some point and came across a group of goblins? I think they were goblins. I can’t remember.

Anyways the goblins have high AC/low hp/and as a bonus action can go into stealth. I bravely sacrificed myself as a bear to take 6 arrow shots on the first turn. Didn’t go down like a boss and we all took out a bunch of them. At the end of the fight their goblin? boss decided to book it and run. I turned into an eagle and caught up to him. I picked him up and brought him back to the refuge. His new name is “gregory”.

At some point that I can’t remember we went back to the mill to check on the magical door that was inside of the prayer circle room that got scrubbed clean. We were able to get through the magical door by throwing salt at it that we had from the magical bag of holding that’s possibly evil. Inside was some sort of classroom with loot in it and a bunch of scrolls about gnoll orgies. A room with plants inside that gave you boners that chrispy bravely ventured in to grab. I think we triggered a banshee of some sort by opening the door? or it might have just been some sort of evil scream we couldn’t tell. Then there was a set of double doors we opened up that led into the room where SOMEONE broke the salt circle and freed the fiend. According to Joe, the fiend dropped amazing loot if you had killed it.

Great Expectations and Rewards

G.E.A.R. welcomes you to the cause of gaining knowledge and hopefully unlocking the secrets of this great land. Should you choose to go forth on this expedition you will not only be helping expand our knowledge base on the following region, but you will be helping yourself to a share in all wealth gained during said expedition. G.E.A.R. has an iron-clad contract of service that helps protect you in getting your fair share, and in the unfortunate event of your demise your share will be sent to your loved ones or to the rest of your companions, your choice.

We plan to set forth on this 22nd of March, and are currently seeking more adventurers.

More details on G.E.A.R. and this expedition will be received at a later date upon your gesture of interest.

The three of us set out yesterday to explore the southwest areas of the map and had quite the adventure.

We may or may not have released the fiend from his pentagram prison… In the hole we found next the mill (which no one told us about) we pried up a stone from the ceiling and looked inside. There were two solid white figures (seeming to be made of salt) inside of a red pentagram. A woman and a man. The women’s hand was reaching to touch the man’s face while the man was holding a curved dagger. A rock from the ceiling fell into the room and disturbed the circle. The salt began crumbling revealing flesh. We then GTFO’d as quickly as possible and didn’t look back.

We explored further to the southwest towards the ruins of the old farms. When we arrived we found a field full of scarecrows with two wooden peg legs…. We figured out that these were the same creatures whose tracks we found in our first adventure. Steve then began lighting them up with fire bolts while we ran away and the brave Gronk distracted them. Meanwhile, our ranger crit him in the face for a whopping 3 damage… They were strong and we were level 1 but we managed to defeat the three of them.

We then moved further southwest and found some weird shit… A gnoll orgy… Yes you heard correctly. But they were all dead when we arrived, seemingly instantly killed in the middle of their party by the fiend (our Paladin sensed that he had passed through the area).

We then setup camp for the night hoping for a nice night of rest. We were disturbed by three scarecrows in the middle of the night which we struggled to defeat but eventually managed to widdle them down as well. By this time our heroes were tired and decided to make our way back to the Refuge.

Great Expectations and Rewards

G.E.A.R. welcomes you to the cause of gaining knowledge and hopefully unlocking the secrets of this great land. Should you choose to go forth on this expedition you will not only be helping expand our knowledge base on the following region, but you will be helping yourself to a share in all wealth gained during said expedition. G.E.A.R. has an iron-clad contract of service that helps protect you in getting your fair share, and in the unfortunate event of your demise your share will be sent to your loved ones or to the rest of your companions, your choice.

We plan to set forth on this 28th of February, and are currently seeking more adventurers.

More details on G.E.A.R. and this expedition will be received at a later date upon your gesture of interest.

Thanks to everyone who made yesterday’s game! We didn’t have any casualties, but neither did anyone locate any particularly noteworthy treasure troves.

Now that you know what lies beyond the refuge, it falls to you to organize future expeditions. Just announce on the forum when you want to play, where you want to go/what you want to do, and we’ll get an event on the calendar.

Mat and I will be working on making more content available, so you don’t have to leave the refuge via the south-west road. I will be posting Rules Highlights articles (helping explain bits and pieces of the rules) and discussing what you can do with your character’s downtime.

Coming soon...

Welcome to the Refuge portal! We’ve set this up to gauge interest in the upcoming campaign, and provide a place for players to communicate with each other, schedule game sessions, and gloat over their victories.

The Dungeon Masters are busily preparing the wonders and horrors that await beyond the wardings of Refuge itself, and our targeted start date is 01/17/2015. By that time we should have enough content ready to support multiple game sessions, while we continue to flesh out the world and add new challenges for aspiring adventurers.

If you want to join, I encourage you to join the Obsidian Portal and subscribe to the calendar, as well as updates to this log. We’ll be putting up guidelines for character creation, links to the edition of the game we’ll be using (D&D 5E), and some information about the world of Refuge itself. Check out the Home Page for some basic information about the game and contact myself or either of my co-DMs if you have additional questions.